It’s the broken leg and the cast.
It’s the wound and the band-aid.
It’s the rose and the thorns.
It’s the dead hog and the Thielen bacon.

It’s the wailing over the baby boys lost in Herod’s massacre
and it’s the wonder of the birth of the Holy infant Jesus.

It’s Christmas and Lent and Easter.

Night and Day.
Death and Life.
Grave and Glory.

We had a hard night.

It’s my new normal to wake at around 2AM, and rouse my dear André to help me do the bathroom routine which includes getting out of bed, shuffling slowly and painfully to the bathroom, doing chores, taking pills, laboriously limping back to the bed, getting in bed, the process which looks a lot like picking up the dead weight of a heavy sack of flour and heaving it four feet up and sideways where it thuds into a position allowing sleep.

But when you add moving positions twice, one more bathroom trip and adjusting pillows and covers for the tenth time, it is only a tiring, tedious, agonizing interruption too a good night’s sleep.

I was diagnosed with PK on Christmas Eve 2013. My life is now a whirl of pills, PT, falls, adjustments, compromises, broken promises and shattered dreams. It includes canes, walkers, and a wheelchair on occasion. It means great difficulty walking, doing stairs, and sitting down in a chair. It can mean not thinking or talking clearly.

It also means doing Valentine’s dinner at a Wayzata restaurant at 4 PM to
assure a peaceful, crowd-less time with my love who still buy me roses and gives me a card that reads: “for my beautiful wife…”

What is Real? Like The Skin Horse says to the Velveteen Rabbit, It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. It can hurt. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.”

I remember the day light years past when I was experiencing the new pains of PK and in denial and anger over the train wreck of life changes I could foresee coming and a friend asked me, “Are you alright?” I answered rather cynically, “That depends on which part of me you’re talking about.” In my fractured world the broken leg wasn’t even in a cast yet. It was total pain with no hope of healing.

Much is still the same now but more is different. Kind of like playing an old recital piece you’ve gone over time and again until the current version is much better due to time spent practicing but with still hints of the former propensities.

What is real now is an uncanny metamorphosis. Like the blind man at Bethsaida who came to Jesus for healing and at first was made only half-well (Mark 8:22-25)—

Sometimes I see men as trees walking.
Sometimes I see only the trees.
But always though the fog and mist
I see a Sunrise coming
That will not be denied.
I feel hope not despair, joy not sorrow, peace not pain.
Right now, today, my reality includes a warm cup of tea, toast,
Sunshine in my window, roses on my table.

Though my opposite realities collide
They also coexist and create astute beauty

Including this real piece of writing from my PK heart.

“My chains are gone, I’ve been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy rains
Unending love, amazing grace.”

Barbara LaTondresse
15 February 2018

Amazing Grace,My chains are gonelyrics Michael W Smith

*Note: from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary — The Difference Between ASTUTE, SHREWD, and SAGACIOUS Astute is similar in meaning to shrewd and sagacious, but there are subtle differences in connotation among them. All three suggest sharp thinking and sound judgment, but shrewd stresses practical, hardheaded cleverness and judgment (“a shrewd judge of character”), whereas sagacious implies wisdom and foresight combined with good judgment (“sagacious investors”). Astute, which derives from the Latin noun astus, meaning “craft,” suggests cleverness, mental sharpness, and diplomatic skill (“an astute player of party politics”). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astute

It’s third-and-10 at the Minnesota 39-yard line with 10 seconds on the clock and the Vikings down 24-23.

All the Vikings really need to do is get the ball down the field far enough for a reasonable field-goal attempt, say inside the Saints 35-yard line, for a long one. That means get it to a receiver, get out of bounds to stop the clock, and send out Kai Forbath and the kicking team.

Sounds like a slam-dunk but not so with our Viking boys.

The Vikings have a sad history with game-winning field-goal attempts. My heart sank to familiar lows earlier in this game when Forbath missed an essential, easy one and left my mind to ponder the foreshadowing of yet another significant Vikings “snatch defeat out of victory” loss. It was almost enough to make me stop watching, but I didn’t. Resolute fan to the bitter end, I chomp my popcorn and sit on my hands in nervous frustration.

Winston Churchill would have been proud.

The clouds gather in the back of my mind as I also replay the recent back and forth of the lead. We seemed so good in the first half and then came the inevitable let down early in the second half as the Saints came alive and went ahead 24-23.

Oh my. Can’t we win a big one just once? I find myself talking mostly to the cat, but I must admit I sent up a few prayers to Father.

So on third-and-10 Keenum launches a missile of a pass and I hold my breath as Diggs hauls it in, hesitates, unbelievably regains his
balance, and takes off for the end zone.

In that split second Diggs and I both raise our hands and cross the goal line. We stand there stunned; beyond jubilant. Touchdown!

The suddenly, pleasantly surprised, victorious hometown fans see sorrow turned to joy and go wild. Instantly and dizzily awake from a mournful stupor, some laugh, cry, fall up, fall down, kiss, hug, and run in circles: no restraint in this celebration. It dries all tears; the former things are past away. Weeping endures for the night but shouts of joy come in the morning.

I don’t suppose that Stefon Diggs first after-thought was of how this most magnificent Minnesota miracle illustrates a profound spiritual reality, but I take delight in seeing TV repeats of that moment over and over, not just because it encourages us weary, forlorn Vikings fans, but, also, because it oddly enough encourages me in my faith walk.

My first after-thought was that the Minnesota Miracle is a grand reminder to me to review and thank my Almighty Father for the miracles He’s done in my life, and that this glorious Viking moment was meant to showcase three aspects of the way in which God interacts with each of His children including me (“ the birth of a vision, death of a vision, fulfillment of a vision”***).

Three hours had passed since my dear husband, Andre, left the house to keep an appointment with our family doctor. The appointment actually was for me but I was having a difficult moment and couldn’t walk so he went without me to get the doc’s signature on paperwork to facilitate a refund of my Delta air ticket thru trip insurance.

I was reaching for my phone to call him when, out of the blue, our son came in the front door. “Mom. Dad asked me to tell you in person that he was taken by ambulance to the Methodist Hospital ER with a kidney stone attack. He’s there to take a cat scan and get morphine for the pain.”

My husband was in excruciating pain in the Methodist ER. The words echoed in my muddled brain.

I was thankful that my dear son told me in person and was here to help and at the same time I was in shock. He promised he’d check back as soon as he knew anything, gave me a kiss, and left.

The house got very quiet, like the eerie calm that precedes an intense thunderstorm. I called Methodist Hospital, said I was trying to locate my husband, and asked the lady if they had admitted person by the name of ‘André LaTondresse’.

I could tell by her tone she thought it odd that I didn’t know these things but she, nevertheless, looked up his name and she found him listed in the ER, Room 9. I suppose she was trying to say that’s where I could find him if I came right over.

Pain mingles with foreboding once again as this day brings new trials on top of the old, the preceding ones in a pattern resembling the layers of an archeological dig.

Suddenly, in the midst of this most recent of quiet times when I’m asking, ‘Where are you, God?’, the front door bursts open and a tired, haggard, and somewhat ashen Andre plops into the nearly chair, looks at me, sighs, and says, “I’m home!”

In college I worked long hours at our local seasonal sweet corn canning factory.

My bruised and bloodied fingers bore witness to the grueling nature of my task within that process which was to transfer by hand the freshly shiny canned corn cans by twos out of huge iron baskets into cardboard boxes containing 24 cans each, over and over again, until the whistle signaling the end of the 18 hour shift blew and I made my way home to collapse exhausted in my bed until the morning whistle blew six hours later jarring me awake and signaling the time to start the work day all over again.

In another arena, I have known the painful yet beautiful anguish of childbirth. Those of us who have birthed and delivered babies could, but maybe shouldn’t, write volumes about the ins and outs, the upside down sides of that messy, miraculous process of birth.

And I have been a foreign missionary on the front lines, engaged in all-consuming spiritual labor, birthing, and nurturing a Siberian church in Akademgorodok, Russia.

Each of these instances show the work to be worth the effort and ‘well done’ whether from fellow humans or God will be the judgment; as a result it becomes easy to measure one’s worth by what one is or is not able to perform well along life’s way. Labor toward perfection seems to lead to success in life.

If I get an A+ on a school project, win the state tournament, get named the “most likely to succeed”, perform the interview well enough to be hired for the coveted teaching job, or have that beautiful baby, then all’s well. Worthy. Perfect. Success.

But if I fail the test, lose the job, can’t have that baby, see little fruit on the mission’s trees, or find myself burdened with a debilitating disease unable to perform any of life’s daily tasks without help, then what?

Do I have a meaningful place in God’s world despite my disability?

Does God use the same scale to measure the weight of my service before and after seasons of suffering and misfortune?

Recently I discovered that John Milton (1608-1674) and I have something in common besides being fellow pilgrims on faith’s journey. Milton at mid-life also had an unexpected life-changing blow; he experienced the shock of suddenly becoming blind.

He wrote the sonnet On His Blindness in February of 1652 as he wrestled then, as I do now 2017, with the weighty questions of worth and purpose amid the perception of wobbly performance in life.

On His Blindness

When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide;“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”I fondly ask. But Patience to preventThat murmur, soon replies: “God doth not needEither man’s work or his own gifts; who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs kingly. Thousands at his bidding speedAnd post o’er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait.”

When Henry David Thoreau said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…,” he probably didn’t have a traditional yearly weekend camping event with friends in mind but oddly enough the English teacher in me can make the leap. I won’t detail the hows and whys of that right now.

Suffice it to say that one of my favorite summer traditions, our annual camping weekend in Wisconsin with dear friends, always makes me smile. In this blog post, entitled ‘Louis Vuitton Bag Camping’, I will try to capture the essence of my happy thoughtfulness into word pictures so you can see this elegant, extravagant, beautiful, quirky event in all its unique glory.

Little Claire, age two, sits at rapt attention on the top of a picnic table, mesmerized, watching fashionista, Cheryl, put on her makeup. Claire totally enjoyed her first camping beauty lesson that fine morning. Over time she observed and absorbed other valuables from these vibrant special friends who know how to live life with gusto and grace.

Our camping adventures began modestly with a weekend group of friends gathered at a KOA near Cannon Falls. We were a motley crew. Friends sporting off-brands: a ragtag assemblage of Goodwill variety camping stuff blended together with garage sale finds, secondhand tents, and worn campers.

No Airstream trailers here.

Our children were small. Claire still fit in one of those Walker thingies with wheels that kept her out of the mud mostly and provided a tray for Cheerios and s’mores and whatever else she could pick up off of the muddy ground.

Our adventures were modest, too, like shopping the rather primitive KOA
Campground store. Surprising Donna made a spectacular find while we were there: multi-colored Tiki string lights which that evening illuminated more than the Adams’ camper with a warm, almost fanciful, campfire glow. I have a suspicion this was when Donna’s ‘strings of lights’ vision was born and ‘ let there be light’ became her mantra thereafter.

In fact, Donna later found a cheap craft kit somewhere that she lovingly and painstakingly assembled until the unique plastic multicolored string of funky, chunky lamps was born and fashioned to hang on their camper awning just outside the door. For over 30 years now that string of lights reigns on Steve and Donna’s camper kind of like a symbol of our longevity.

In those early days the kids were willing to create our evening entertainment providing us with original, wonderful, crazy skits to enjoy. Also it was at one of these early campouts that Uncle Roy invented ‘Slinky Stinks’. Each evening with flashlights in hand the kids would go hunting and find ‘Slinky Stinks’ and have stories to tell with Uncle Roy’s help.

Also in the early days we got rained on and didn’t like being wet, or having our toddlers playing with mud, so one of our people, Doug, who is gifted with ‘practical genius’, crafted the Mother of all Tarps. Not only was the size massive, it required a massive group of friends to engineer the positioning and then execute the placing of the Tarp to ensure dry and happy campers.

In fact, one year when everyone else was leaving the campground slimy, soggy, and exhausted from fighting the rain, our amusement was to line our camp chairs up in a row snug, smug, and dry under our Tarp to smile as we waved the other wimpy campers ‘goodbye’.

This Mother of all Tarps became an excellent frame for Donna’s ever-growing strings-of-lights display. Donna began to collect strings of lights to the point that she had to catalogue her boxes of lights; she had so many. Of course, the fact that she is a librarian and English teacher in real life helps immensely when it comes to organizing boxes of string lights, and we are not talking ‘little white lights’. We are talking pink flamingos, beer bottles, fish, Teddy bears, sail boats, champagne glasses, hot dogs, dinosaurs. The variety is endless and that’s not all.

Our much loved ‘ambience director’ Cheryl, selects the theme of the campout for that week end and brings the props necessary to transform our picnic tables into designer displays of that theme. Centerpieces, tablecloths, napkins, and some times even clothes tie to the theme. In the picture at left, for example, “Dîner en Blanc” was the theme for our Saturday night dinner in 2012.

Also, each member, or family, as the case may be, is responsible to bring the camp shirt with the unique logo designed by Petra and the ‘fish bottle’ with the dollar store quality candelabra stuck in its neck. How the fish bottles were procured is legendary story in its own right.

In fact, the picture below right has all the mementos of a great time: Cheryl’s magnificent centerpiece, lighted tulips, fish bottle candles, cd player, Donna’s colored theme lights, & even my “graduation retirement” bell that we used to call the events.

Our ‘music director’, Steve, selects and brings the music to go with the theme. Cheryl shares that theme with Donna, who then dreams up a story and selects the lights she wants to display that go with the story. Sometimes the story relates directly to the theme or it could instead relate of an important event in the past year for someone in the group. When Donna tells the story she’s usually standing on a camp chair, if she hasn’t had too many happy hour happies, and the rest of us are to guess the theme of her story; kind of like Charades with a twist.

Over the years our little camping group has acquired either by truth or embellishment a legendary status. No only do we have the Mother of all Tarps, we have the Mother of all Light Displays, an Ambience Director, and a Music Director, we have among us one whom we with fond affection have christened ‘General Jeanne’ who guides us all in our Pre-Campout Planning Meeting to agree upon the Mother of all Event Timeline/Duties Grid which gives details as to the location, event times, menus, individual duties, assignments, and cell phone numbers.

So our weekend is filled with just the right amount of predictability and spontaneity to make it fun for all. Saturday evening dinner is predictably grilled BYO steak, with all the trimmings, including baked potatoes wrapped in foil by Anne. Mary and Sue make the salad. Andre, Steve, Roy rotate the duty of being the ‘Gentlemen: Start-your-grills’ guy, the VIP point person for setting and enforcing grill duties. Roy got the VIP job of turning on the coffee because he is an ‘early riser’. So the smells of fresh coffee mingled with the bacon frying and Ginny’s breakfast potatoes cooking greet us as we await our community breakfast on Saturday morning.
This is what I call Louis Vuitton bag camping. Elegant. Extravagant. Beautiful. Quirky.

And when we gather in one big camp chair circle on Saturday night, just after the 4 O’clock Happy Hour and before the 7:00 O’clock Steak Dinner, to do the 5 O’clock News, we all with reverence listen as each person in what is now lst, 2nd, and 3d generation camper group recounts the important happenings for them in the previous year. We catch up with each other’s lives, and we remember, and like Robert Burns of long ago, we are thankful.

It takes a rare breed to live in this Far Side of life where expectations clash often with the harshest of realities. I know.

Take last night for example. It was a seemingly ordinary end to the day: the hubs and me watching WCCO 10 O’clock News in bed. But just as the ‘CCO man began telling us our weather, Andre rose quite suddenly and as he hobbled out of the bedroom I thought I heard him say, “I’m bleeding and I can’t get it to stop! I’m going to call Chris to take me to the ER now!”

I made my way up and out of bed and at that point noticed the unmistakable trail of blood on the floor out the bedroom door, through the hall, and into the bathroom where Andre was trying to stop the deep red gusher spouting from his leg with a Band-Aid. I said, “Stay here. You’re dripping blood everywhere.”

Christopher arrived speedily, and as Andre made his way to the car in a drenching rain, thunder lightening everywhere, Charlie Brown’s “dark and stormy night” setting came to life, and I started to chuckle.

It’s 11 o’clock at night. Most of my neighbors are settled in for sleep, but not me. My husband just left for the ER. I’m not sure when, or if, he’ll be back tonight, and I’m left to find the Swiffer and wet towels to mop up blood. And as the storm intensifies I’m also gathering a flashlight in the event the lights go out.

If it pours when it rains, I will be ready.

*****

Note: This story has a happy ending. Christopher’s wife, Ashley, is a nurse practitioner. Chris and Ashley and our little grandson live only a mile or two away. So as the boys headed toward the ER, Ashley suggested they stop at Walgreens instead and pick up the stuff she would need to fix Andre and head to their house instead. Brilliant idea! Dr. Ashley got the situation under control and in a flash, much to my surprise, the boys came home smiling. Apparently Andre scratched open a varicose vein and it exploded creating last night’s chaos, but all’s well that ends well and I’m so glad.

It’s Holy Week. Time for me to reflect once again on the events and lessons surrounding Christ’s death and resurrection.

I wrote “The Executioner’s Song” after re-reading the Abraham-Isaac story in Genesis 22. It highlights a lesson about ‘sacrifice’ that I learned during a particularly dark time while we lived in Russia.

Sacrifice proved to be the only way for Abraham. It was the only way for Christ as he faced the cross, and it was the only way for me in Russia at that time.
The poem points out ‘why’. It has to do with the name of God memorialized by Abraham when God provided the ram to be sacrificed in place of Isaac. “Jehovah-Jireh” is the KJV’s translation of YHWH-Yireh and means “The LORD Will Provide”.

The Executioner’s Song

The lonely mountain death walkMist rises with the early morning sunas the chill damp reaches my soul.Every part of me is cold.

I’ve been here before, Lord.

I recognize the path.It’s worn and obvious, not overgrown;winding precariously around thecrags and skirting precipices;narrow, but sure–not random.

This had been planned; prepared.Executioners always know this way.

Yet you say Your name is YHWH-Yireh.What will the Lord provide?
A sharp knife?New rope to bind my Isaac?Skillful, deft hands, quickly movingso Isaac is surprised and tethered before he can get away?

I avoid his eyes.I know they will speak of betrayal, shock, fear.I, too, feel the sudden unmistakable jolt of revulsion.Together we both know I hold the knifeand we both know it will come down,so I avoid his eyes.

He lies still now, expecting the blow,hoping the knife is sharp and the aim is dead accurate.

It is.In one wave of glorious surrender,the knife falls.

He is dead.I am, too.Neither of us will ever be the same.We both sing the Executioner’s songand sense the uncanny peace.

On the mountain YHWH-Yireh has His way;so we carry the bloody knifeand remember.

It was 6:30 in the evening when my father and mother met my beau for the first time.

The parents liked Andre exceedingly, enchanted by his romantic French name: enthralled with his good looks. The feeling was reciprocated at least at first read, but to the close observer, namely me, my boyfriend seemed unusually nervous, and quiet, and thoughtful.

Andre and I had trekked the seventy-some miles southeast; my parents had driven about the same distance northwest, to spend the evening getting acquainted over dinner at Michael’s Restaurant in Rochester, Minnesota, locally famous and storied, renown both for its steaks and for its reputation as a “celebration of life’s special moments” kind of place.

The evening began innocently enough with the usual pleasantries, like my dad asking the boyfriend “if he liked to fish” and my mom asking me “how I am”, but soon we got beyond and into the serious talk that happens when ordering food at a fancy restaurant, like my dad saying “he’s sure glad we picked a place that had real meat and potatoes, not one of those funny organic spots that serve fruit salad and sprouts,” and my mother saying, “Now, Lorence, let’s not bring that up,” when dad starts to talk about the particular trials of being a funeral director, like the fact that the Catholics always used incense during the service that made him dizzy.

Andre had only recently brought up this Meet the Parents idea. It made me happy. He was special from the first day we met washing windows at a University of Minnesota fraternity house and the more time I spent with him the more I began to think he might be The One.

In fact, we had recently emerged from one of those messy, uncertain fogs that occur just before a spectacular dawn.

Our dinner progressed nicely thru the expected stages with great food and pleasant exchanges, so when my mother suggested she and I should go powder our noses before dessert arrived, I thought it was a wonderful idea, in particular to see what she thought of my gorgeous friend.

When we returned to our table my father was all smiles. Obviously they got along famously, but was there more? That smile demanded explanation, and my father couldn’t wait to spill the beans. He turned to me and said, “Your friend here has something he wants to ask you.”

The room began to spin around me; voices subdued and ghost-like swirled nearby but not from our table. Our table was quiet. Father was clueless–still beaming. Mother was smiling at my father, too, as if to say, “Oh, Lorence, how good of you to give the boy a little nudge.” All three of us turned to Andre, who was wearing a stunned ‘I can’t believe you said that’ look.

The hot fudge melted more than the ice cream as dinner became a sloppy puddle of dessert. I don’t think my parents even noticed the awkward transition as Andre thanked Dorothy and Lorence for coming to meet us and stood to help me out of my chair, an obvious sign that ‘exit stage right’ couldn’t happen fast enough.

We said our hasty good-byes to The Parents and as our car doors slammed shut Andre finally exhaled but didn’t speak or look at me.

Lost in thoughts too deep for words both of us remained speechless as Rochester night-lights twinkled, flying by; a blurry multi-colored kaleidoscope; a romantic, silent, expectant peace.

When I was growing up if my dad said “it’s fish or cut bait time” we knew what he meant whether or not he was offshore with one of us kids in his ancient beloved aluminum fishing boat with the Johnson 10 HP Outboard motor or on dry land sans boat but speeding around a slow-moving tractor on a narrow Iowa highway in a brand new loaded V8 four hole Buick.

It was a time to make a significant move. It was a time to decide Something Big.

All at once the dreamy panorama stilled as Andre put the right signal on and took the last exit before leaving town. He braked hard, maneuvering the car just off the ramp onto the shoulder, to stop and take my hands in his.

When he looked into my eyes and said those magic words, “Will you marry me?” I, without hesitation, said, ’Yes,’ and for me, for us, that moment, that night, changed all things forever.

I don’t need to buy an opportunity to board a contraption bound for intense right angle jerks, steep climbs, and free falls.

I have quite enough of all three in life as it is, especially lately with too much news and ranting response analysis about radical upheavals in ournation and throughout our world bombarding me daily on TV and in social media.

Tired. Sad. Fearful.

It’s time for Barbara to take a break.

It’s time to cultivate what I’m going to call the Arts of Silence: Listening. Seeing. Breathing. Touching. Reaching. Loving. Resting.

A while back a little esoteric spiritual group I’m part of called The Wardrobe read and studied and practiced In The Path of Celtic Prayer: An Ancient Way to Everyday Joy.

In these pages the author, Calvin Miller, introduces us to six types of Celtic prayer that can connect us to God more deeply by helping us pray out of the circumstances and uncertainties of our own life. God’s heavenly omnipotence, omnipresence, and sovereignty meet my earthly needs and limitations directly when I link them together in this way.

So I will revisit the Ancient Way. I will heed the call of the God of Eternal Mornings to “come by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Russians don’t do Thanksgiving but exPats like the LaTondresses longing for traditional, familiar holiday comforts and treasures must, so we went the extra mile to recreate a traditional Thanksgiving feast in our Akademgorodok home.

Thanksgiving in Akademgorodok

Improvisation and creativity stood front and center helping us bring the vision to glorious reality as we felt Bounty. In II Corinthians 6:10 the Apostle Paul calls it “having nothing and yet possessing all things.”

First, we had to create the dining room table out of the interior doors and construct saw horses to provide the supports. Then we had to clear the center area of the living room to place the table. Everyone brought chairs. Someone had a tablecloth big enough, and someone else brought candles.

Andre’s Siberian Chicken

We even had Andre’s newly bought prize of cute, colorful little Siberian chicken with a huge fan of tail feathers pretending to be a turkey for an apt centerpiece.

Andre and I then bravely walked to the local meat market to buy beef and pork. The meat market is a third world delight with the heads of the animals displayed next to the animal parts…all laid out on bloody, dirty wooden slabs.

A gargantuan chopping block resides at the end of the hall surrounded by carcasses. The butcher, front and center, sported a thoroughly stained formerly white outfit and demanded attention as he whacked at a chicken. I would not want to be his enemy.

He reminded us of the executioner in Bartholomew Cubbins. Some lucky person has to haggle with him for the price of the meat; definitely Andre’s job. So Bartholomew Cubbins and Andre did battle and we loaded our blood prizes in bags to carry home.

We had roast beef and roast pork baked together with garlic and onion; mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey legs (from America–the white meat is eaten by USA folks!), stuffing, four kinds of salads. and one year we even had two kinds of green vegetables (beans and peas)–hard to find…and, of course pumpkin pie and cherry pie (made totally from scratch). We couldn’t find pumpkin so one of our creative co-workers, Steve, made the pumpkin pie with carrots. Tasted great!

All of us did the cooking, and we used the ovens in four apartments because each oven has only one rack…and one never knows how much heat it will generate…and it’s impossible use more than two burners and the oven simultaneously or the fuse will blow.

Welcome!

This blog is an eclectic, multi-faceted work in progress, a quilt in the making with varied hues both light and dark, irregular shapes, seemingly random impressions intermingled and placed to form my life story. It is a book in process written on the blank pages by the Master Designer. From this vantage point thru the lens of my faith-walk I will tell my stories, share my poems, and offer my personal reflections looking for joy, wonder, purpose, and hope each day along the along the way. Join me as I reflect and remember, watch and wonder.